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Yet, looking at another set of facts, reflection tells us that
we are in sympathetic relation to each other, suffering,
overcome, at the sight of pain, naturally drawn to forming
attachments; and all this can be due only to some unity among us.
Again, if spells and other forms of magic are efficient even at a
distance to attract us into sympathetic relations, the agency can
be no other than the one soul.
A quiet word induces changes in a remote object, and makes itself
heard at vast distances- proof of the oneness of all things
within the one soul.
But how reconcile this unity with the existence of a reasoning
soul, an unreasoning, even a vegetal soul?
[It is a question of powers]: the indivisible phase is classed as
reasoning because it is not in division among bodies, but there
is the later phase, divided among bodies, but still one thing and
distinct only so as to secure sense-perception throughout; this
is to be classed as yet another power; and there is the forming
and making phase which again is a power. But a variety of powers
does not conflict with unity; seed contains many powers and yet
it is one thing, and from that unity rises, again, a variety
which is also a unity.
But why are not all the powers of this unity present everywhere?
The answer is that even in the case of the individual soul
described, similarly, as permeating its body, sensation is not
equally present in all the parts, reason does not operate at
every point, the principle of growth is at work where there is no
sensation- and yet all these powers join in the one soul when the
body is laid aside.
The nourishing faculty as dependent from the All belongs also to
the All-Soul: why then does it not come equally from ours?
Because what is nourished by the action of this power is a member
of the All, which itself has sensation passively; but the
perception, which is an intellectual judgement, is individual and
has no need to create what already exists, though it would have
done so had the power not been previously included, of necessity,
in the nature of the All.
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